The Effects of the Holocaust: Psychiatric, Behavioral, and Survivor Perspectives

In this paper the authors review perspectives related to Holocaust victims, limitations of Holocaust studies are discussed, and suggestions for viewing the long-range post-traumatic effects of the Holocaust upon its victims from social and behavioral science perspectives are advanced. The views of survivors toward post-war adjustment, drawn from interviews with Holocaust victims, are also presented

Evaluating the Feasibility of a Future Care Planning Program with Older Adults

Despite potential health care needs, many older adults do not make concrete plans about future care in late life. Prior community programs have not addressed this need via Cooperative Extension systems. To address these gaps, we developed and evaluated the pilot study program, Future Care Planning, designed to help older adults plan for their own personal, health, and environmental care. The Plan Ahead program (Plan Ahead) consists of two sessions implemented over two weeks to teach older adults to plan for their future care across multiple domains, including health communication, aging in place, and end-of-life discussion. Iowa State University Human Science Extension and Outreach specialists delivered the program to a sample of 161 community-residing older adults. We evaluated 1) the feasibility of the Plan Ahead program, 2) the acceptability of the program, and 3) participants’ intention to change their future care planning. Participants reported that the program was useful and relatively easy to implement. They also reported being satisfied with the content and willing to attend other relevant programs in the future. Overall, the findings suggest that Plan Ahead is feasible as an educational program to help older adults prepare for future care planning

Defining Successful Aging: A Tangible or Elusive Concept?

Purpose of the Study: Everyone wants to age successfully; however, the definition and criteria of successful aging remain vague for laypersons, researchers, and policymakers in spite of decades of research on the topic. This paper highlights work of scholars who made significant theoretical contributions to the topic. Design and Methods: A thorough review and evaluation of the literature on successful aging was undertaken. Results: Our review includes early gerontological definitions of successful aging and related concepts. Historical perspectives reach back to philosophical and religious texts, and more recent approaches have focused on both process- and outcome-oriented models of successful aging. We elaborate on Baltes and Baltes’ theory of selective optimization with compensation [Baltes, P. B., & Baltes, M. M. (1990a). Psychological perspectives on successful aging: The model of selective optimization with compensation. In P. B. Baltes & M. M. Baltes (Eds.), Successful aging: Perspectives from the behavioral sciences (pp. 1–34). United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press], Kahana and Kahana’s preventive and corrective proactivity model [Kahana, E., & Kahana, B. (1996). Conceptual and empirical advances in understanding aging well through proactive adaptation. In V. Bengtson (Ed.), Adulthood and aging: Research on continuities and discontinuities (pp. 18–40). New York: Springer], and Rowe and Kahn’s model of successful aging [Rowe, J. W., & Kahn, R. L. (1998). Successful aging. New York: Pantheon Books], outlining their commonalities and differences. Additional views on successful aging emphasize subjective versus objective perceptions of successful aging and relate successful aging to studies on healthy and exceptional longevity. Implications: Additional theoretical work is needed to better understand successful aging, including the way it can encompass disability and death and dying. The extent of rapid social and technological change influencing views on successful aging also deserves more consideration

The future of post-reproductive health: The role of the Internet, the Web, information provision and access

The World Wide Web celebrated its 25th birthday in 2014. In those 25 years, the Web has evolved from static websites (Web 1.0) to a highly complex dynamic system (Web 3.0) with health information processing one of the primary uses. Until now, the western biomedical paradigm has been effective in delivering healthcare, but this model is not positioned to tackle the complex challenges facing healthcare today. These challenges have arisen by increasing healthcare demands across the world, exacerbated by an ageing population, increased lifespan and chronic conditions. To meet these needs, a ‘biopsychosocial’ shift from reactive to proactive health is necessary with a patient-centric emphasis (personalised, preventative, participatory and predictive) that includes ‘gender-specific medicine’. The management of the menopause, part of post-reproductive health, requires a life-course approach as it provides a framework for achieving a women’s preferred health outcome. Surveys from www.menopausematters.co.uk have consistently shown that women do not feel informed enough to make decisions regarding Hormone Replacement Therapy and alternative therapies. Health professionals must meet this challenge. The recently published National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance on the diagnosis and management of the menopause highlights the need for tailored information provision. The Internet underpinned by the academic disciplines of Health Web Science and Medicine 2.0 has potential to facilitate this shift to biopsychosocial medicine and tailored information within a life-course framework. The concept of Health Web Observatories and their potential benefit to a life-course approach using tools such as www.managemymenopause.co.uk is discussed

Health professions and risk of sporadic Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease, 1965 to 2010

In 2009, a pathologist with sporadic Creutzfeldt- Jakob Disease (sCJD) was reported to the Spanish registry. This case prompted a request for information on health-related occupation in sCJD cases from countries participating in the European Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease Surveillance network (EuroCJD). Responses from registries in 21 countries revealed that of 8,321 registered cases, 65 physicians or dentists, two of whom were pathologists, and another 137 healthcare workers had been identified with sCJD. Five countries reported 15 physicians and 68 other health professionals among 2,968 controls or non-cases, suggesting no relative excess of sCJD among healthcare professionals. A literature review revealed: (i) 12 case or small case-series reports of 66 health professionals with sCJD, and (ii) five analytical studies on health-related occupation and sCJD, where statistically significant findings were solely observed for persons working at physicians' offices (odds ratio: 4.6 (95 CI: 1.2-17.6)). We conclude that a wide spectrum of medical specialities and health professions are represented in sCJD cases and that the data analysed do not support any overall increased occupational risk for health professionals. Nevertheless, there may be a specific risk in some professions associated with direct contact with high human-infectivity tissue

Physiological Correlates of Volunteering

We review research on physiological correlates of volunteering, a neglected but promising research field. Some of these correlates seem to be causal factors influencing volunteering. Volunteers tend to have better physical health, both self-reported and expert-assessed, better mental health, and perform better on cognitive tasks. Research thus far has rarely examined neurological, neurochemical, hormonal, and genetic correlates of volunteering to any significant extent, especially controlling for other factors as potential confounds. Evolutionary theory and behavioral genetic research suggest the importance of such physiological factors in humans. Basically, many aspects of social relationships and social activities have effects on health (e.g., Newman and Roberts 2013; Uchino 2004), as the widely used biopsychosocial (BPS) model suggests (Institute of Medicine 2001). Studies of formal volunteering (FV), charitable giving, and altruistic behavior suggest that physiological characteristics are related to volunteering, including specific genes (such as oxytocin receptor [OXTR] genes, Arginine vasopressin receptor [AVPR] genes, dopamine D4 receptor [DRD4] genes, and 5-HTTLPR). We recommend that future research on physiological factors be extended to non-Western populations, focusing specifically on volunteering, and differentiating between different forms and types of volunteering and civic participation

Evaluating the Feasibility of a Future Care Planning Program with Older Adults

Despite potential health care needs, many older adults do not make concrete plans about future care in late life. Prior community programs have not addressed this need via Cooperative Extension systems. To address these gaps, we developed and evaluated the pilot study program, Future Care Planning, designed to help older adults plan for their own personal, health, and environmental care. The Plan Ahead program (Plan Ahead) consists of two sessions implemented over two weeks to teach older adults to plan for their future care across multiple domains, including health communication, aging in place, and end-of-life discussion. Iowa State University Human Science Extension and Outreach specialists delivered the program to a sample of 161 community-residing older adults. We evaluated 1) the feasibility of the Plan Ahead program, 2) the acceptability of the program, and 3) participants’ intention to change their future care planning. Participants reported that the program was useful and relatively easy to implement. They also reported being satisfied with the content and willing to attend other relevant programs in the future. Overall, the findings suggest that Plan Ahead is feasible as an educational program to help older adults prepare for future care planning.This article is published as Lee, J. E., Kim, D., Kahana, E., & Kahana, B. (2021). Evaluating the Feasibility of a Future Care Planning Program with Older Adults. Journal of Human Sciences and Extension, 9(3);154-164. Retrieved from https://www.jhseonline.com/article/view/895. Posted with permission. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License Creative Commons Attribution License</a